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Mon 24 May, 2004 10:17 am
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Los Alamos National Laboratory Creates Hydrogen Research Institute
By Adam Rankin
Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
Los Alamos National Laboratory announced on Wednesday the creation of the Institute for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research to coordinate the lab's efforts at unraveling the technical issues facing what some say is the energy source of the future.
"The whole driver is clean energy," said Bill Tumas, who will serve as the institute director.
Many energy experts foresee that hydrogen?- the most abundant element in the universe and source of the sun's power?- could eventually replace fossil fuels as a potentially zero-emission fuel source for most applications. Scientists have already developed prototype fuel cell units smaller than a refrigerator that can power a house.
But the most challenging technical hurdles for fuel cells are in their application to cars, where scientists are working on better ways to store hydrogen and to make the technology more cost-effective.
Fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases, which most scientists believe will lead to global warming. On the other hand, hydrogen, if produced through renewable energy sources such as wind or solar energy, produces only water vapor as a byproduct.
Dating back to the 1970s, LANL researchers have worked to make key improvements to fuel cell technology, improving its efficiency and making the energy source more feasible.
Tumas said those research efforts at LANL have been informally coordinated all along, but the institute will enhance research efforts across laboratory organizations by creating a formal network focused on meeting strategic goals.
The institute will also promote partnerships with other federal laboratories, universities and industry.
"Since it became a national initiative of the president, the laboratory has been looking at ways to be more responsive to the issue," said Ken Stroh, who coordinates LANL's hydrogen fuel cell research and will now also serve as the institute's deputy director.
Last year, President Bush announced a $1.7 billion initiative to develop hydrogen fuel cell technologies to help cut the nation's reliance on foreign energy sources.
"Where the laboratory can play a role is in the fundamental understanding of science to help others develop products and innovations," Stroh said.
For now, the institute will just be a virtual one, with a network of scientists from LANL's Chemistry and Materials Science and Technology divisions using existing laboratory facilities.
Plans are in the works to devote some space to offices for the institute, but there is no space available yet, Tumas said.
Keep in mind that these people live on grants and/or projects. When neither are available, they discover the joys of standing in the unemployment line.
who will George pick a fight with if they are successful, and there is no longer a dependence on oil?
[and realizing that, where will the 'grant money' come from?]
Maybe in Canada, grants are based on necessity. In the US? This is supposed to be a serious discussion, ya know?
serious; oops sorry, i thought it was supposed to be 'parallel'!
Just read an article on "alternative fuels" and their practicality in last month's Scientific American. Seems that ways of generating the hydrogen that promises the perfect engine that creates only water as a "waste" material is, well...problematic. Sure, given the hydrogen that works in fuel cells the final energy extraction is a dream come true. But how do we obtain this ubiquitous element that essentially is non-existent on this planet in the elemental form needed without the synthetic efforts of man? It is enough to note that at this point in time generating the universe's simplest element, here on earth, requires large energy expenditure. The hydrogen on earth is already spent; to use it we must re-invest energy to convert it back to its elemental form for it to be a viable fuel. This requires the use of other sources of energy. Electricity is one but that generated by sunlight (the only outside source in what is mostly a relatively a closed system regarding our energy use) is fairly inefficient. The other sources beg the question of: why not just use them and eliminate the middleman? The search for a better alternative fuel is almost pie in the sky. The best fuel is still petrol and the most realistic efforts are focused upon the increased efficiency in its use. The Electric/Gas hybrid is a real success story but not without the subsidies which are necessary to defray cost to the end user(surely this is one of the benefits of big government). Sans the goal of "cleaner fuels", even the hybrid is irrelevant. The beauty of the hybrid is in the engineering involved that tends to parsimoniously use that energy with a kind of "thinking/knowing/deciding" computerized power plant and not the electricity sometimes employed (The electricity's source, after all, is...Gas).
It doesn't take long to see that each time one converts one type of energy into another a measure of efficiency is lost. This is why it cost more to air condition (cool) a house then it does to heat it.
On the whole, fuel cells are useful in certain situations that will not tolerate the "drawbacks" of such energy extracting devices as internal combustion gasoline engines (Space capsules and such). But they will not supply the bulk of the energy that we presently require.
Real world efforts at energy extraction should be concentrated on increasing efficiency of existing fossil fuels. This includes more efficient engine use-- that concept includes the use of less energy to accomplish the same goals. At some point we may decide that it is not necessary to use 4500lb trucks with big block V-8's just to ride back and forth to work unless, of course, our work requires us to tow a small back-hoe to our place of business.
JM
The institute has computer security holes.......
As James typed, the road to hydrogen is difficult, but we should not give up. Modest amounts of hydrogen can be produced at about double the cost of petroleum. Likely we can narrow that gap. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil could save the lives of millions of USA tax payers by avoiding World War 3.
Only a few alternative energy ideas look as attractive as hydrogen, and none appear viable very large scale, so we may need to replace fossil fuels with the combined effort of 100 alternatives. Neil
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